Bringing color into a living space isn't just about painting the walls. It's also about paying attention to the way the objects in a home relate to one another. A full spectrum of color resides on most bookshelves, but it takes a good eye to make an average shelf into a work of art.

Some argue that the color-coding system isn't the best way to organize books, since it abandons alphabetical or genre ordering. But for visually-oriented people, color cataloging can be easier to use than other systems, as long as you remember a book by its cover.

I do this. It looks so much nicer. However, I organize my books by type by shelf (novels, reference/fiction, cookbooks, coffee table) as well, so each shelf is organized individually by color instead of the whole bookshelf. That way I can actually find the book I'm looking for without trying to remember only that it is orange and having tiny pocket novels next to giant coffee table books.

I do it for my closet too. (But again, dresses/tops/pants are and sorted within that criteria instead of just the whole thing.)

I love this idea so much and the second photo is one of the first photo's I favourited when I opened my flickr
account!
The trouble is it won't work with my Terry Pratchett collection, those books have just so many colours!!!
:)

I did this with my CD collection before ditching the jewel cases in favor of an album. My books are separated by genre and then sorted either alphabetically or by size. So many of the spines are multi-colored anyway.